# [texhax] Strange behaviour of size of parenthesis using lmodern

Eduardo M KALINOWSKI ekalin at laposte.net
Sun Jul 29 19:43:31 CEST 2007

For some strange reason, the parenthesis around R^4 are bigger than
those of the other expression (which apparently retain their smallest
size) in this code fragment:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\begin{document}
$\dim\left(R^{2\times 3}\right) \ne \dim\left(R^4\right)$
\end{document}

Actually \dim is not necessary to cause the problem, but just to
illustrate the kind of situation in which something like that would be
used. Also, \left( and \right) are used because in my document I have a
macro that typesets \dim( ) around its argument (which could potentially
be higher than a line).

This strange behaviour does not happen in 10pt font size, only in 11pt
and 12pt. Also, if the lmodern package is not used, both sets of
parenthesis have the same size (the smallest one).

Does anyone have any idea of the reason for that?

--
It's documented in The Book, somewhere...
-- Larry Wall in <10502 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>

Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
ekalin at gmail.com
http://move.to/hpkb